Trying to turn an old MacBook into a Chromebook (or similar)

[Infrasonic]

Some general observations on multiboot.

It's easier to fix things if you have each OS on a different drive, rather than dealing with partitions on one drive.
Windows feature updates have broken my multiboot setup on my desktop several times over the years and it's a one minute job to fix with more than one drive...

On a laptop you could keep the native OS on the internal drive and USB boot from an external SSD with persistence. The fly in the ointment is the speed of the USB ports (as I mentioned upthread). On modern laptops with Thunderbolt 3/4 or USB 3.2 gen 2 (10Gbps)/USB4 ports it would be almost as fast as using the internal drive (if both are SSD).

[Fluke]

This dual boot install guide is from 2018...https://www.maketecheasier.com/install- ... buntu-mac/

...Setting Up Boot Order
Upon completion, your Mac will likely boot into Ubuntu automatically. If so, the GRUB bootloader has taken over: we need to reassert rEFInd’s control. Follow the instructions in *this guide to use efibootmgr from within Ubuntu to solve the problem.

There might be a shortcut, though. If you only have rEFInd and Ubuntu installed, this Ubuntu Terminal command should set you right. However, circumstances vary, so don’t just run it blindly:

Code: Select all

sudo efibootmgr -o 0000,0080

* https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/bootco ... efibootmgr

Edit: I've also seen references to rEFInd plus, another fork which has more features apparently - maybe have a look at a comparison review and see if it fixes known boot issues?

Ok I just executed the first command from the 'rodsbooks' link (sudo efibootmgr) and the order is:

0000 - ubuntu
0001 - <chinese looking characters> ??
0080 - Mac OS X

No rEFInd boot manager listed, as in the example.

[Urbandreamer]

This dual boot install guide is from 2018...https://www.maketecheasier.com/install- ... buntu-mac/

* https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/bootco ... efibootmgr

Edit: I've also seen references to rEFInd plus, another fork which has more features apparently - maybe have a look at a comparison review and see if it fixes known boot issues?

Ok I just executed the first command from the 'rodsbooks' link (sudo efibootmgr) and the order is:

0000 - ubuntu
0001 - <chinese looking characters> ??
0080 - Mac OS X

No rEFInd boot manager listed, as in the example.

Can I recommend reading some of Mr Smith's other pages. I've been having issues booting QNX (yet another operating system) on a PC which only uses EFI. I found his extensive pages on EFI (also covering rEFIind and EFI on the mac) very useful. My problem was quickly solved.

https://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/index.html

[Infrasonic]

This dual boot install guide is from 2018...https://www.maketecheasier.com/install- ... buntu-mac/

...Setting Up Boot Order
Upon completion, your Mac will likely boot into Ubuntu automatically. If so, the GRUB bootloader has taken over: we need to reassert rEFInd’s control. Follow the instructions in *this guide to use efibootmgr from within Ubuntu to solve the problem.

There might be a shortcut, though. If you only have rEFInd and Ubuntu installed, this Ubuntu Terminal command should set you right. However, circumstances vary, so don’t just run it blindly:

Code: Select all

sudo efibootmgr -o 0000,0080

* https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/bootco ... efibootmgr

Edit: I've also seen references to rEFInd plus, another fork which has more features apparently - maybe have a look at a comparison review and see if it fixes known boot issues?

Ok I just executed the first command from the 'rodsbooks' link (sudo efibootmgr) and the order is:

0000 - ubuntu
0001 - <chinese looking characters> ??
0080 - Mac OS X

No rEFInd boot manager listed, as in the example.

Upthread I said that there are loads of threads on the internet about rEFInd needing reinstalling and GRUB issues. So it looks like that scenario for you, but I can't be sure because I'm not looking at your laptop and I've never messed about with Macs.

Have you searched within that rEFInd website or elsewhere for help around reinstalling it on an existing Mac dual boot setup?

When I have to fix my Windows PC mulitboot it sometimes needs me to reinstall my boot manager (Neosmart EasyBCD a GUI app that duplicates the BCD edit CMD command line) - it's possible to save config files and reload them but I've done it enough times now that I just reset it manually each time as it keeps the methodology in my brain. It's tick a few boxes and drag and drop the boot order - simple.

[Fluke]

Thanks to you Infrasonic and to the other contributors to this thread, I really appreciate your time and help. I've managed to sort out a few things which I needed to do. I've got a bit of reading to do get the boot manager to give me the 2 OS options which I'll have to do next week. Rodsbooks seems to be the place for that. I was trying to get it all set up to give to its new owner tomorrow as it's his birthday, I'll do this anyway but then I'll have to take it straight back while I sort out the more immediate problem of the screen freezing, particularly when web browsing. I've just installed Chrome to see if it encounters the same problem. I know Infrasonic you gave me some advice re upgrading hardware, so I'll have a read back through the thread. The new battery seems to be working ok. So nearly a resurrected old MacBook but not quite.

I've also followed up on a few of the suggestions in this helpful video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRXbjLbepqc

[Infrasonic]

WRT to browsers - with old hardware you'll eventually run into a situation where you won't be able to run the most recent versions of browsers, or you'll start to get operational issues (that might be why your getting display glitches - you'd need to run some A/B routines to narrow it down).

There are browsers that are more security/privacy focused by default, will block ads etc without the need for extensions/add ons which will help with reducing resource hogging like CPU/network use.
I use Brave on Linux/Android but there are other options... https://privacytests.org/

The trade off with running older versions of OS', browsers and apps with an active internet connection is security - specifically becoming more susceptible to malware as the bugs get exploited. For a technically aware user you can work around it with firewall settings and other tweaks, for the average non techie user you'd need to be careful.